Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-08-10
''EMPLOYMENTS OF HEAVEN" ;"
WHAT ARE OUR DEPARTED CHRIS
TIAN FRIENDS DOING NOW?
THE QUESTION EASILY ANSWERED
THEY ARE DOING NOW IN HEAE-
EN- WHAT IN THEIR BEST MO
MENTS THEY DID ON EARIH.
THE LOVER OF FINE ARTS HERE
LOVES THEM THERE.

MENT,S THEY DID ON EAR1H.
THE LOVER OF FINE ARTS HERE
LOVES THEM THERE.
The Military are in Armies Celestial.
gCANNOT THE SOUL SING :?
WHAT DO THE LAWYERS, THL
CHEMIST. THE ASTR ONOMERS,
THE HISTORIANS, AND THE
EXPLORERS DO IN
| HEA Y EN-?
DIR. TALMAGE's SERMON, SUNDAY, JULY IL
THE HAMPToNs, July 31.-The Rev. 7
Dewitt Talmage's sermon for this morn
ing was on the Unemployment of Heaven .
and his text the 1st verse, chapter l., ol
Ezekiel: "Now it came to pass in the
Ithirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the
fifth day of the month, as was among the
captives by the river of Chebar, that the
heavens were opened"
| Ezekiel, with others, had been expatria
ted, and while in foreign slavery was stand
ing on the banks Of the royal canal which
he and other serfs had been condemned to
dig by the order of Nebuchadnezzar-
royal canal, in the text, called the river OF
Chebar; the illustrious exile had visions ol
Heaven. Indeed, it is almost always SC
that the brightest visions of Heaven come
not to those who are on the mountain top
of prosperity, but to some John on desolata
Patmos, or to some Paul in Mamertine dun
geon, or to some Ezekiel standing on the
banks of a ditch he had been compelled to
dig-yea, to the weary, to the heart broken,
to those whom sorrow has banished.
The text is very particular to give us the
exact time of the vision. 1t was the thir-
tieth year, and in the fourth month, and in
the fifth day of the month. So you have
had visions of earth you shall never forget
You remember the year, you remember the
month, you remember the day, you remem-
ber the hour. Why may MOTIVE have some
such vision this morning, and it be the sixth
month and in the fourth day of the month.
| The question is often silently asked,
though perhaps never audibly propounded,
"What are our departed Christian friends
doing now?" The question is more easily
answered than you might suppose. Though
there has come no recent intelligence from
upon the story of eighteen centuries ago,
still think we may from strongest infer
ence decide what are the present occupa.
tions of transferred kinsfolk.
| After God has made nature he never
eradicates the chief characteristics of it's tenn.
permanent. You never knew a man phleg-
matte in temperament to become sanguine
in temperament. You never knew a man
sanguine in temperament to become phleg.
matte in temperament. Conversion plants
new principles in the soul, but Paul and
John are Just as different from each other
after conversion as they were different from
| each other before conversion. If CONVEX
sion does not eradicate the prominent char
acteristics of the temperament neither will
death eradicate them.
You have, then, only by 6. sum in SUBJ
traction and sum in addition to decide
what are the employments of your depart
ed friends in the better world. You are to
tsubtract from them all earthly grossness
and add all earthly goodness, and then you
are to come to the conclusion that they are
doing now in heaven what in their best mo-
ments they did on earth. The reason that
so many people never start for heaven is be-
cause they could not stand it if they got
there if it should turn out to be the igid
a nd formal place some people photograph it..
| We like to come to church. but we would
not want to stay here till next Christmas.
We like to hear the Hallelujah chorus, but
| we WOulu uOG WALT W u6dT III dill tu0 tiiu0
| for fifty centuries. 1t might be on some
great occasion it would be possibly comfort
able to wear a crown of gold weighing sew
eral pounds, but it would be an afaiction to
wear such crown forever. In other words,
we run the descriptions Of heaven into the
ground while we make that which was in
| tended as especial and celebrative to be the
exclusive employment of the heaven. You
might as well, if asked to describe the habits
| Of American society, describe decoration
| day, or Fourth of July, or an autumnal
Thanksgiving as though it were all the time
| that way.
am not going to speculate in regard to
thefuture world, but must by inevitable
laws of interference and deduction and
common sense cunclude that in heaven we
will be just as different from each other as
we are now different, and hence that ther e
will be at least as many different employ
ments in the celestial world as there are
employments here. Christ is to be the great
love. the great joy, the great rapture, the
worship of heaven; but will that abolish
employment? No more than love on earth
|-paternal, filial, fraternal, conjugal love
abolish earthly occupation.
| In the first place, remark that all those
of our departed Christian friends who on
earth found great joy in the fine arts are
now indulging their tastes in the same di-
rectiou. On earth they had their gladdest
pleasures amid pictures and statuary, ano
! in the study of the laws of light and shade
and prospective. Have you any idea tha
that affluence of faculty at death collapsed
and perished? Why so, when there is more
for them to look at, and they have keenel
appreciation of the beautiful, and they stanC
1 81 ,bor khn otc pr
the rainbows and the spring mornings are
woven?
Are you so obtuse as to suppose that be-
cause the painter drops bis easel and the
sculptor his chisel and the engraver hi
knife, that therefore that taste, which ht
was enlarging and intensifying for forty OF
fifty years, is entirely obliterated? These
artists, or these friends of art. on earth
worked in coarse material and with imper.
feet brain and with frail hand. Now they
have carried their art into larger liberties
and into wider circumference. They are at
their old business yet, but without the ia
tigues, without the limitations, without the
Ihindrances of the terrestrial studio.
Raphael could now improve upon his mas
|terpiece of Michael the Archangel new thai
he has seen him. and could improve upon
his masterpiece of the Holy Family now tina,
he has visited them. Michael Angelo could
better present the Last Judgment after he
has seen it's flash and heard the rumbling
battering rams of its thunder. Exquisite
Icolors here, graceful line here, powerful
chiaroscuro here; but am persuaded that
the grander studios and the brighter
galleries are higher up by the wind
ing marble stairs of the sepulchre, and
that Turner and Holman, Hurt and Rem
brandt, and Titan and Paul Veronese, if
they exercised saving faith in the Christ
whom they portrayed upon the canvas, are
painters yet, but their strength of faculty
multiplied ten-thousand fold. The reason
that God took away their eye and their hand
and their brain, was that he might give
them something more Timber, more wieldl y,
more skillful, more multiplitant
Do not. therefore, be melancholy among
the tapestries, and the bric-a- -brac, and the
embroideries, and the water colors, and the
works of art which your departed friends
used to admire. Do not say: II am sorry
they had to leave all these things" Rather
E.T al l. L. r~I,<